Good idea. Thanks, Cindi.
I think the ARS handbook is frequently very helpful and I refer to it for almost every rose I buy. In the cases of some roses not widely distributed I think there might sometimes be a knot of people who inflate the ratings of certain roses. It happened with the Kordes rugosa Robusta two decades ago. More recently it has happened with a few minis, too. I also think that there are roses distributed far outside their appropriate ranges. These end up with ratings below 6.0 even though they might be very good in some tiny islands of perfect weather. HMF, if you read the comments by rose growers and look at where the photos come from, can sometimes be very helpful in determining whether a rose is more a Northern European rose, an Eastern/Plains State US rose, or a West Coast/Australia rose.
